Abstract:
Judicial review constitutes a cornerstone of constitutional governance, serving
as a pivotal mechanism for ensuring that administrative action conforms to
principles of legality, rationality and procedural fairness. In the Sri Lankan
context, while traditional grounds of judicial review, namely illegality,
procedural impropriety, and unreasonableness, remain entrenched, the
doctrine of proportionality has yet to be formally recognized as an independent
and structured evaluative standard. Proportionality, as elucidated in
jurisdictions such as the United Kingdom, India and South Africa, provides a
rigorous analytical paradigm for adjudicating the legitimacy of governmental
measures by systematically balancing competing public imperatives and
individual rights. This paper employs a comparative jurisprudential
methodology, situating the United Kingdom as the locus of doctrinal
origination and normative development, India as an exemplar of pragmatic
integration within a common law system analogous to Sri Lanka, and South
Africa as a paradigmatic instance of constitutionally entrenched, rights-based
proportionality adjudication. Through critical scrutiny of landmark decisions
and judicial reasoning, the study extrapolates salient principles and best
practices that may be harnessed to inform the prospective codification and
operationalization of proportionality within the Sri Lankan legal milieu. The
study contends that the formal adoption of proportionality as a ground of
judicial review would fortify the rule of law, enhance institutional
accountability, and facilitate calibrated and equitable administrative decisionmaking.
The paper concludes by articulating potential avenues for doctrinal
reform and policy innovation, thereby bridging comparative insights with
domestic legal development and reinforcing the role of judicial review as a
dynamic instrument of constitutional governance in Sri Lanka.
